Dispute Managment

SAP Solution Brief
SAP® Dispute Management

DISPUTE MANAGEMENT
Optimizing Your Financial Supply Chain

The SAP® Dispute Management
application enables you to
resolve customer disputes over
receivables more effectively.
Fully integrated with other
SAP financial management
applications, it can help you
improve the tracking and

To improve collections and reduce days sales outstanding(DSO),
nearly every company must frequently investigate open receivables from its customers. In many industries, some customers
regularly reduce bill paid amounts – or fail to pay their bills at
all. All too often, companies use manual processes to handle
these dispute cases, which can involve many different areas of
the organization. Such manual processing is typically timeconsuming andexpensive, ties up significant resources, and may
also delay the resolution of dispute cases. In the United States, for
example, 61% of receivables remain open for more than 50 days.

processing of short payments,
streamline your accountsreceivable processes, and
enhance your customer
relationships. Companies that
use SAP Dispute Management

There is a way that you can optimize the accountsreceivable and
collections processes in your financial supply chain with the
SAP® Dispute Management application, a part of the mySAP™ ERP
Financials solution. Companies that use the application show
improvement in the processing of accounts receivable disputes,
with days sales outstanding reduced by as much as 20%.

have reduced their days sales
outstanding by as much as 20%.Centralized Case Processing

When your company experiences a dispute with a customer
over a receivable, you can open up a dispute case in SAP Dispute
Management that becomes the central object for processing the
dispute. A dispute case is an electronic file for collecting relevant
information and displaying that information in a structured form.
It includes attributes such as the reason for thedispute, the
dispute’s priority, and the relevant customer contact. Amount
fields in the application show you – at a glance – the disputed
amount and all relevant payments, credit memos, and write-offs.

You can create a dispute case directly from a specific financial
transaction, such as the processing of an incoming payment that
has been reduced or a customer’s line-item display. (SeeFigure 1.)
You can also set the application to open dispute cases automatically for payment deductions posted by electronic account
statement or lockbox file.

Figure 1: Create Dispute Case from Posting an Incoming Payment
(Short Payment)

When you create a dispute case, the application automatically
fills the amount fields. You can also set most attributes automatically, which considerablyreduces manual processing. As the case
is created, the application links all information for the disputed
transaction to the dispute case – including the customer name,
invoice number, and invoice amount – as well as all relevant billing
documents. You can then access these items directly from the
dispute case as you need them. (See Figure 2.)

Your department manager can assign a dispute caseto a coordinator who is then responsible for resolving the case. The coordinator can also indicate any other employees who should be
involved, including those from other departments. The application
lets you classify and manage each dispute case according to its
current processing status and the reason for the dispute – which
may include the following:
• Incomplete supply or service(quantity deficiency)
• Deficient delivery or service (quality deficiency)
• A mismatch between price and service (price difference)
• Failure to meet the delivery date (time difference)
• Failure to follow through on promised trade promotions
• Other misunderstandings
Employees assigned to process dispute cases receive notification by
e-mail. They can process dispute cases directly in the...